"I should guide humanity in the way of progress.... Oh! you misjudge me; you do not know my real character."
Poor Nourrit! He made a great mistake in wanting to have been or to appear other than he was: he was a delightful player! a dignified and noble and kindly natured man! He had taken the Revolution of 1830 very seriously, and, for three months, he appeared every other day on the stage of the Opéra as a National Guard, singing the Marseillaise, flag in hand. Unluckily, his patriotism was sturdier than his voice, and he broke his voice in that exercise. It was because his voice had already become weaker that Meyerbeer put so little singing in the part of Robert. Nourrit was in despair, not because of his failure, but because of that of the piece. In common with everyone else, he thought the work had failed. Meyerbeer was himself quite melancholy enough! Nourrit introduced us to one another. Our acquaintance dates from that night.
Meyerbeer was a very clever man; from the first he had had the sense to place a great fortune at the service of an immense reputation. Only, he did not make his fortune with his reputation; it might almost be said that he made his reputation with his fortune. Meyerbeer was never for one instant led aside from his object,—whether he was by himself or in society, in France or in Germany, at the table of the hotel des Princes or at the Casino at Spa,—and that object was success. Most assuredly, Meyerbeer gave himself more trouble to achieve success than in writing his scores. We say this because it seems to us that there are two courses to take. Meyerbeer should leave his scores to make their own successes; we should gain one opera out of every three. I admire the more this quality of tenacity of purpose in a man since it is entirely lacking in myself. I have always let managers look after their interests and mine on first nights; and, next day, upon my word! let people say what they like, whether good or ill! I have been working for the stage for twenty-five years now, and writing books for as long: I challenge a single newspaper editor to say he has seen me in his office to ask the favour of a single puff. Perhaps in this indifference lies my strength. In the five or six years that have just gone by, as soon as my plays have been put on the stage, with all the care and intelligence of which I am capable, it has often happened that I have not been present at my first performance, but have waited to hear any news about it that others, more curious than myself, who had been present, should bring me.
But at the time of Richard Darlington I had not yet attained to this high degree of philosophy. As soon as the play was finished, it had been read to Harel, who had just left the management of the Odéon to take up that of the Porte-Saint-Martin, and, be it said, Harel had accepted it at once; he had immediately put it in rehearsal, and, after a month of rehearsals, all scrupulously attended by me, we had got to 10 December, the day fixed for the first performance. The Théâtre-Français was in competition with us, and played the same day La Fuite de Law, by M. Mennechet, ex-reader to King Charles X. In his capacity of ex-reader to King Charles X., Mennechet was a Royalist. I shall always recollect the sighs he heaved when he was compelled, as editor of Plutarque français, to insert in it the biography of the Emperor Napoléon. Had he been in a position to consult his own personal feelings only, he would certainly have excluded from his publication the Conqueror of Marengo, of Austerlitz and of Jena; but he was not the complete master of it: since Napoléon had taken Cairo, Berlin, Vienna and Moscow, he had surely the right to monopolise fifty or sixty columns in the Plutarque français. I know something about those sighs; for he came to ask me for that biography of Napoléon, and it was I who drew it up. In spite of the competition of the Théâtre-Français there was a tremendous stir over Richard. It was known beforehand that the play had a political side to it of great significance, and the feverishness of men's minds at that period made a storm out of everything. People crushed at the doors to get tickets. At the rising of the curtain the house seemed full to overflowing. Frédérick was the pillar who supported the whole affair. He had supporting him, Mademoiselle Noblet, Delafosse, Doligny and Madame Zélie-Paul. But so great was the power of this fine dramatic genius that he electrified everybody. Everyone in some degree was inspired by him, and by contact with him increased his own strength without decreasing that of the great player. Frédérick was then in the full zenith of his talent. Unequal like Kean,—whose personality he was to copy two or three years later,—sublime like Kean, he had the same qualities he exhibits to-day, and, though in a lesser degree, the same defects. He was just the same then in the relations of ordinary life,—difficult, unsociable, capricious, as he is to-day. In other respects he was a man of sound judgment; taking as much interest in the play as in his own part in the suggestions he proposed, and as much interest in the author as in himself. He had been excellent at the rehearsals. At the performance itself he was magnificent! I do not know where he had studied that gambler on the grand scale whom we style an ambitious man; men of genius must study in their own hearts what they cannot know except in dreams. Next to Frédérick, Doligny was capital in the part of Tompson. It was to the recollection I had of him in this rôle that the poor fellow owed, later, the sad privilege of being associated with me in my misfortunes. Delafosse, who played Mawbray, had moments of genuine greatness. One instance of it was where he waits at the edge of a wood, in a fearful storm, for the passing of the post-chaise in which Tompson is carrying off Jenny. An accident which might have made a hitch and upset the play at that juncture was warded off by his presence of mind. Mawbray has to kill Tompson by shooting him; for greater security, Delafosse had taken two pistols; real stage-pistols, hired from a gunsmith,—they both missed fire! Delafosse never lost his head: he made a pretence of drawing a dagger from his pocket, and killed Tompson with a blow from his fist, as he had not been able to blow out his brains. Mademoiselle Noblet was fascinatingly tender and loving, a charming and poetic being. In the last scene she fell so completely under Frédérick's influence as to utter cries of genuine not feigned terror. The fable took on all the proportions of reality for her. The final scene was one of the most terrible I ever saw on the stage. When Jenny asked him, "What are you going to do?" and Richard replied, "I do not know; but pray to God!" a tremendous shudder ran all over the house, and a murmur of fear, escaping from every breast, became an actual shriek of terror. At the conclusion of the second act Harel had come up to my avant-scène:[1]—I had the chief avant-scène by right, and from it I could view the performance as though I were a stranger. Harel, I say, came up to entreat me to have my name mentioned with that of Dinaux: the name, be it known, by which Goubaux and Beudin were known on the stage. I refused. During the third act he came up again, accompanied this time by my two collaborators, and furnished with three bank-notes of a thousand francs each. Goubaux and Beudin, good, excellent, brotherly hearted fellows, came to ask me to have my name given alone. I had done the whole thing, they said, and my right to the success was incontestable. I had done the whole thing!—except finding the subject, except providing the outlines of the development, except, finally, the execution of the chief scene between the king and Richard, the scene in which I had completely failed. I embraced them and refused. Harel offered me the three thousand francs. He had come at an opportune moment: tears were in my eyes, and I held a hand of each of my two friends in mine. I refused him, but I did not embrace him. The curtain fell in the midst of frantic applause. They called Richard before the curtain, then Jenny, Tompson, Mawbray, the whole company. I took advantage of the spectators being still glued to their places to go out and make for the door of communication. I wanted to take the actors in my arms on their return to the wings. I came across Musset in the corridor; he was very pale and very much moved.
"Well," I asked him; "what is the matter, my dear poet?"
"I am suffocating!" he replied.
It was, I think, the finest praise he could have paid the work,—the drama of Richard is, indeed, suffocating. I reached the wings in time to shake hands with everybody. And yet I did not feel the same emotion as on the night of Antony! The success had been as great, but the players were nothing like as dear to me. There is an abyss between my character and habits and those of Frédérick which three triumphs in common have not enabled either of us to bridge. What a difference between my friendship with Bocage! Between Mademoiselle Noblet and myself, pretty and fascinating as she was at that date, there existed none but purely artistic relations; she interested me as a young and beautiful person of promising future, and that was all. What a difference, to be sure, from the double and triple feelings with which Dorval inspired me! Although to-day the most active of these sentiments has been extinguished these twenty years; though she herself has been dead for four or five years, and forgotten by most people who should have remembered her, and who did not even see her taken to her last resting-place, her name falls constantly from my pen, just as her memory strikes ever a pang at my heart! Perhaps it will be said that my joy was not so great because my name remained unknown and my personality concealed. On that head I have not even the shadow of a regret. I can answer for it that my two collaborators were more sadly troubled at being named alone than I at not being named at all. Richard had an immense success, and it was just that it should: Richard, without question, is an excellent drama. I beg leave to be as frank concerning myself as I am with regard to others.
Twenty-one days after the performance of Richard Darlington the year 1831 went to join its sisters in that unknown world to which Villon relegates dead moons, and where he seeks, without finding them, the snows of yester year. Troubled though the year had been by political disturbances, it had been splendid for art. I had produced three pieces,—one bad, Napoléon Bonaparte; one mediocre, Charles VII.; and one good, Richard Darlington.